Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		2.0

Bag Boy Lover Boy Blu-ray Movie Review

He may not be quite ready for his close-up.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 14, 2017

I may have a new candidate for Oddest Film I’ve Reviewed. That list is long, and evidently growing longer by the day, and has included a number of extremely outré efforts in any number of genres. But Bag Boy Lover Boy’s very title may hint at its truly peculiar qualities, qualities which include a setup which is simplicity itself but whose execution (an apt term, considering the carnage that ultimately unfolds) is at times patently bizarre. The film boasts a cast and production crew that my hunch is very few film fans will have heard of. The film’s star is one Jon Wächter, a youngish man with a kind of hangdog Ray Romano- esque quality about him, albeit with a kind of weird generic European accent (the actor evidently hails from Sweden). Wächter portrays Albert, a somewhat dimwitted guy who works at a food cart providing hot dogs and other noshables in what looks like lower Manhattan. The film begins with a disturbing vignette showing Albert dealing with a highly inebriated man who, with his girlfriend or wife, goes a little (traditionally New York) ballistic when Albert drops a hot dog on the floor of the food wagon and then simply picks it up and places it back on the burner. That leads to an odd interchange where it seems like violence may break out, until another passerby named Ivan Worthington (Theodore Bouloukos) wanders into the area and confronts the drunk guy, giving him a little Manhattan “love” (and you New Yorkers will know exactly what I mean). Ivan becomes a regular customer at Albert’s cart, and begins taking pictures of him, ultimately inviting Albert to take part in what turn out to be sessions devoted to various fetishistic practices. Albert simply doesn’t seem to have the intellectual capacity to really understand what he’s taking part in, something that may lead to some viewers feeling a bit of appropriate discomfort at his predicament, but things ultimately venture into comedy-horror territory when Ivan takes off and Albert decides to start using Ivan’s studio for his own “shoots” (so to speak).

In doing a bit of background research on the film and Wächter, I found this interesting interview which mentions one aspect of the film that provides a lot of the perhaps subliminal angst, namely that Wächter’s very distinctive persona seems to inform Albert so fully that some may wonder if he’s actually acting. Albert is one of those “slow” people that seem to exist only to be taken advantage of, and Ivan’s nefarious but obviously laughable attempts to matriculate the sadsack hot dog vendor into what Ivan insists is “Art” provides a lot of the film’s “eeewww” factor. The film’s screenplay, by Toni Comas and Andre Torres (Torres also directed), makes it clear that Ivan himself is perfectly aware that what he’s photographing would hardly qualify as “Art” by anyone’s definition, something that makes his quasi-seduction of Albert all the more disturbing.

Bag Boy Lover Boy clocks in at a relatively brief hour and fifteen minutes or so, and it suffers from incomplete development, to the point that some may wonder if Albert is indeed supposed to be developmentally disabled, or is simply not the brightest bulb in the pack. There are allusions to his near narcolepsy as well as an active fantasy life (one that ultimately tips over into sociopathic behavior), but the character is both so oddly singular and context free that it’s difficult to know what to think about him. A little more time detailing Albert’s background may have only upped the angst levels the film attempts to get to once Albert decides to go into “photography” himself.

As it stands, the film is a vignette driven enterprise that offers surreal visions galore, including everything from Albert and a female collaborator smearing food all over themselves to another food laden photo shoot where a young woman is dressed as a pig and Albert repeatedly tries to ply her with a large basting fork. It’s just flat out gonzo bizarre stuff, but, again, it’s largely divorced from any context and therefore probably doesn’t have the comedic energy it might have. It’s fine to skewer those with arty pretensions, but there has to be something more than shock value at play. Consider the laugh out loud fracas that takes place in a gallery late in Catfight (link is to the British release which I reviewed, the American release can be found here) where a knock down drag out fight between two combatants is “appreciated” as performance art by a hoity toity crowd. There’s nothing like that in Bag Boy Lover Boy, with a kind of smarmy feeling tendency to laugh at Albert rather than with him.

Bag Boy Lover Boy may well still appeal to those with blacker than black senses of humor, but it really doesn’t consistently hit the bullseye with either its comedy or its horror ambitions. The tone here is what I might call “David Lynch Student Film”-ish, with an uneasy combo platter of laughs and shocks, but performances are surprisingly good, if completely peculiar, throughout.

Bag Boy Lover Boy Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Bag Boy Lover Boy is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Severin Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. The film was digitally captured with Arri Alexa cameras, and while it boasts generally good detail levels, it has a somewhat flat and drab overall appearance. Grading keeps things on the cool side quite a bit of the time, to the point that flesh tones can almost skew toward purple. The palette actually looks slightly desaturated throughout the presentation, which I'm assuming was an intentional stylistic choice. There are a number of other "arty" moments where things verge on the surreal (see screenshot 15). Detail levels tend to suffer at least a little in several dimly lit scenes, like an early moment with Albert munching on hot dogs in his apartment or even later in some of the photo studio sequences.

Bag Boy Lover Boy Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

While there's not much "wow" factor in Bag Boy Lover Boy's LPCM 2.0 mix, there's also nothing really to complain about, either. Ambient effects aren't especially spatially placed, but are prevalent in the outdoor scenes, while the bulk of the film, which offers fairly talky dialogue scenes, boasts fine fidelity and no problems whatsoever to report.

Bag Boy Lover Boy Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (1080p; 2:34)


• Audio Commentary with Director Andres Torres, Actor Theodore Bouloukos and Editor Charlie Williams


• The Student Films of Actor Jon Wachter:

  Got Light (1080i; 1:22) is in black and white and silent.

  The Never Starting Story (1080i; 1:13) is also in black and white and silent, though this comes with a mandatory Wachter "commentary".

Bag Boy Lover Boy Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I've said this same thing a few other times recently in reviews for other candidates for Oddest Film I've Reviewed, but the one thing Bag Boy Lover Boy has going for it is that it's sui generis. You may not like all of it, or even most of it, but chances are you've never seen anything quite like it before. Technical merits are generally strong for those considering a purchase.